The most amusing part of the Trump transition has been watching its effortless confounding of the media, often in fewer than 140 characters. One morning, after a Fox News report on lefty nuttiness at some obscure New England college — a f...

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Columns

California’s bar association is considering a ban on sex. No need to move to another state if you’re single and looking. The California State Bar regulates attorneys, not bars. Currently, the State Bar’s rules of professional conduct do not prohibit sex between attorneys and their clients as long as there’s no “coercion, intimidation or undue influence,” and as long as the relationship doesn’t cause the attorney to perform legal...

Columns

I didn’t see the first text message from a House colleague, or the second from my staff. Then the texts flooded in. As I read texts and news alerts about what was unfolding back home on Dec. 2, 2015, my walk from the House floor back to my office turned into a run. I had just voted in favor of a procedural motion to allow debate on a bill to keep guns out of the hands of suspected terrorists. It failed. When I reached my office, my first instinct was to verify the details and...

By Pete Aguilar|6 days ago

Columns

Bad for the Earth — good for punk rock. Now that reality has semi-set in, that is my only cogent polling analysis, I told a trio of local professors who each brilliantly dissected the results at a Thursday lunch event I emceed, themed “What the heck happened on election day?” That was no doubt the theme used dozens of times in political science department gatherings and on Rotary Club daises across the nation this week. At our meeting, sponsored by the San...

Opinion

Columns

Twenty-five years ago — December 1991 — communism died, the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union disappeared. It was the largest breakup of an empire in modern history and not a shot was fired. It was an event of biblical proportions that my generation thought it would never live to see. As Wordsworth famously rhapsodized (about the French Revolution), “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive/But to be young was very heaven!” That dawn marked the ultimate...

Opinion

Columns

It is unconscionable to put Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions in charge of federal civil rights and federal environmental enforcement. Sessions repeatedly has shown that he is at the extreme right in these areas and he should not be the attorney general of the United States. Although it would take political courage to stand up to the newly elected president, pressure should be placed on moderate Republicans to join Democratic senators in denying confirmation to Sessions. Throughout his...

By Erwin Chemerinsky|1 week, 1 day ago

Opinion

Columns

On Thursday, the board of directors of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority will vote on a new plan for policing its vast system of buses and trains. Millions of passengers will depend on this plan to keep them safe. As your sheriff, I have an obligation to tell you this plan does not achieve that goal. Metro currently contracts with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) for its policing services, but Metro’s new plan deeply slashes the number of...